Wednesday, September 28, 2016

I had the pleasure of attending JavaOne this year, and I can sum up the experience in one word: Brilliant. This year was much different than in years past for me, as I had one talk to co-present on Sunday and I had the rest of the week wide open for attending sessions. As such, I've learned that it really is nice to have a lighter schedule at JavaOne so that you can take in all of the expertise and networking...that is what JavaOne is all about...learning from the experts and growing your network. I also had my lovely wife along with for part of this trip, which made my stay in San Francisco very nice, as I finally took a few minutes to enjoy the city this year...never had done that in the past.

My conference experience started off with the excellent NetBeans party on Saturday evening. I am a member of the NetBeans Dream Team, so many of my colleagues were in attendance at this party. It was the first time I had seen many old friends, and it was great to have a chance to catch up without needing to worry about rushing to the next session. I want to thank Geertjan Wielenga and Oracle for hosting this excellent event, and I cannot wait until the next Apache NetBeans party.

On Sunday at NetBeans Day, I had the pleasure of presenting "Enterprise Modeling of MVC and Java EE Artifacts" with experts Ivar Grimstad and Gaurav Gupta. Ivar is on the expert group for JSR 371 (MVC 1.0)...which we hope to move forward for use with Java EE 8. Gaurav is the lead developer for the excellent JPA Modeler tool. During our session, Ivar gave an overview of MVC 1.0, Gaurav highlighted the JPA Modeler utility, and I demonstrated how the JPA Modeler could be utilized with JSF applications, as well as MVC 1.0. I want to thank Geertjan again for getting the three of us together for this excellent talk.

The opening keynote was amazing. A large portion was devoted to showing how the world is using Java, including the outstanding Mars rover presentation by Dr. Anita Sengupta (@Doctor_Astro). It was amazing to see the complexity and detail that went into ensuring the Curiosity rover landed without issues. Of course, Java 9 was mentioned, along with a demo of modularity and the jshell by Mark Reinhold...very informative, as always.

During the opening keynote, I anxiously awaited word on the status of Java EE, and after quite a long wait, the announcement was made. I am very excited that Java EE 8 efforts are moving forward, albeit a bit differently than previously planned. Essentially most of the specifications for Java EE 8 is moving forward, and it is proposed that the following be removed so that resources can spend time in other areas: JSR 371 (MVC 1.0) and JSR 368 (JMS 2.1), JSR 373 (Management 2.0).I will cover my thoughts on these proposed dropped specifications in a follow-up post. The main focus for Java EE 8 will be to start paving the path for a more micoservices focused platform, whereby Java EE 9 will be released a year later and it will include the full microservices implementation. The addition of Health Checking and Configuration specifications would be beneficial for providing a standard means by which to monitor services and dynamically configure our applications. Overall, it is great to see things moving forward for Java EE, although I do have some reservations on the overall approach. I do not believe that every industry will adopt the microservices architecture, so there needs to be a path for those who will be continuing with the standard Java EE application architecture.

Rather than going through detail on each of the sessions that I had attended, I will provide a summary of my thoughts on the conference overall. As I have said many times before, time is not our friend...and this certainly was the case this year at JavaOne, as there were too many great tutorials, sessions, and networking events that it was difficult to see everything. Hats off to Sharat Chander and others at Oracle for organizing such a great conference. I also want to thank the content review committees for reviewing and choosing such great conference tutorials and sessions...the content was excellent!

The tutorials and hands-on labs dealing with Microservices were hot this year. I attended two of them myself. One of them was a hands on lab that enabled us to develop Microservices using JBoss Forge and WildFly Swarm. It was a fast pace tutorial covering everything from setting up Eclipse (unfortunately not my favorite IDE), through utilizing Forge, constructing services, and deployment. I am glad I attended, as it gave me a different perspective on development from what I am used to. The second was a tutorial on utilizing Payara Micro and the Payara MicroProfile. I found this tutorial very in-depth, covering these technologies from the ground-up, with lots of detailed explanation. I learned it is quite easy to add the Payara Microprofile to a project, simply by including the dependency in the POM:

I attended many key Java EE sessions, including those given by Linda DeMichiel and others leading the specifications. All of these were informative, covering content from previous Java EE incarnations through what to expect in Java EE 8. Linda's presentation on Monday went into a bit more detail on the plans for Java EE 8, and it is clear to see that Oracle is "all in" on moving forward with the newly proposed plan for Java EE 8...which is great! Each of the specification-specific talks that I attended were excellent, including CDI 2.0, JAX-RS 2.1, and JSF 2.3. Great to hear from the experts for these areas. I also took in a couple of other key talks: Java EE Extendable to Functional by David Blevins, and 50 Java EE Best Practices by Ryan Cuprak and Michael Remijan...both great!

There were a lot of sessions on Java 9 and modularity this year. I attended a session on modularity, which was a great introduction for those hadn't yet had a chance to experiment with it. Docker was another hot topic at the conference, and I had the opportunity to attend a couple of sessions covering this great tech.

I had the privilege to attend the JCP Party on Monday evening. Always an excellent opportunity to network with others in the JCP, and this year's event did not let us down. The Chicago Java Users Group (CJUG), Bob Paulin, and myself won an award at the JCP Party on Monday evening for Adopt-a-JSR participants of the year. This was a very nice surprise! I also attended PartyOne, hosted by Tomitribe, ZeroTurnaround, BainCapital, and Hazelcast. This was a great opportunity to network with so many experts...and there was also a great view of the Bay Bridge off the balcony. I want to thank Tomitribe for the invitation! Lastly, I attended the Oracle Appreciation Event, which was very nice. The Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne attendees had AT&T Park to themselves, and we got to see Sting and Gwen Stefani. Great networking opportunity with many great friends.

Overall, JavaOne 2016 was another great conference...very glad to have been a part of it. If you have not done so already, please take the Java EE Survey and provide your thoughts on the upcoming Java EE 8 proposal:http://glassfish.org/survey

Thursday, September 15, 2016

A while back, Geertjan Wielenga had posted about a NetBeans plugin that had been developed for the upcoming Java EE 8 MVC framework. The plugin was originally developed by Manfred Riem, co-spec lead for JSR 371, and Geertjan had extended it to add functionality for viewing all of the MVC controllers within an application. This plugin is a great start to a useful MVC plugin for NetBeans.

I've since taken the plugin and extended it further, adding the following enhancements:

NetBeans workspace now scanned to apply plugin only to those projects that contain MVC controller classes.

Ability to create a new MVC application which includes a basic controller class and corresponding view.

Ability to add new MVC controller class to a project.

Come and check out the new plugin functionality at JavaOne. I have the honor of presenting along with Ivar Grimstad (JSR 371 Expert Group) and Gaurav Gupta (JPA Modeler) in the presentation UGF6435 -- Enterprise Modeling of MVC and Java EE Artifacts for NetBeans Day 2016. I'll demo the plugin during the session, alongside the powerful JPA Modeler utility. Hope to see you there!